


Raised By Kids Who Gave Us Names

by themayqueen



Category: Nashville (TV)
Genre: F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fatherhood, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themayqueen/pseuds/themayqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Deacon Claybourne became a dad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raised By Kids Who Gave Us Names

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure this is as finished as it could be, but I realized how quickly the new season is approaching, and decided to get this out before it became totally jossed. 
> 
> Title comes from "Forgive The Children We Once Were" by Delta Rae.

The one thing that always stays the same is the music. Deacon's on and off the wagon so much he figures the rehab center ought to just put in a revolving door for him, but during those few shining moments of clarity and sobriety, the music is still there. 

_Rayna_ is still there.

She's big as a house and Deacon can't stop laughing at the way she balances the guitar on her belly, but she's determined. If he's lucid enough to write a song, they're going to write a damn song. He kind of likes it; it's the one normal thing he still has going for him. The key is just not to think about the fact that it's another man's baby in there, another man's ring on her finger, another man she's writing songs about these days.

Sometimes Deacon sings to Rayna's belly because he could swear he heard somewhere that babies can hear music in the womb. Most of his songs aren't really appropriate for children so he ends up just humming the melodies. The first time he ever saw—actually saw, not just felt—the baby kick was when he pulled some old Carter family song out of his memory. Half the words to it left his brain years ago, probably lost in the bottom of some bottle, but the gist of the song is there, and the baby obviously likes it.

Rayna says they want to be surprised; they've got male and female names picked out just in case. Deacon can't imagine Rayna having anything but a girl, though. A little miniature version of herself, a country princess in every way possible. A perfect little Southern belle, but a spitfire, too, just like her Mama. 

God only knows if he'll be able to make this sobriety thing stick, but he decides right then and there that he wants to, if only just to watch this baby grow up. It doesn't even matter that it isn't his.

****

He kind of likes being Uncle Deacon, even if he isn't really. Lord knows he doesn't get to see his actual niece enough, and Maddie's long blonde hair reminds him a little bit of hers, though not as curly.

It's a different sort of tour now, with everyone pussyfooting around him and acting like they don't still have a few beers after the show. Just being in the same building as a six pack isn't going to make him backslide. Probably. Deacon doesn't really want to test that theory. 

It's different, too, having Rayna's daughters around. Puts everyone on their best behavior, six packs in the green room notwithstanding. Deacon's pretty sure he's never read a childrens' book in his life, not even when he was a child, but when Maddie can't sleep on the bus, that's exactly what he does. He reads every damn nursery rhyme in the book to her, some of them twice, until she's snoring softly against his side.

As it turns out, he's not so bad at this uncle thing after all.

****

When he looks out at Maddie and Daphne on the stage, all he can see is two little Raynas. He may not have known her at their ages, but it's like looking at photo negatives layered over each other. He can see their future layered in front of them, can see the two of them lighting up a stage just like this, but for more than just the band and crew. They'll fill arenas just like their mama and he feels a strange sense of pride that he's there to see the beginning of it.

It reminds of him that first time Rayna walked into the Bluebird. They were both young, but she was younger and greener, full of a wide eyed innocence he hasn't seen in her eyes for a long time. An innocence he's never seen in Juliette's eyes, and as soon as Deacon compares the two in his mind, he hates himself for it. What he _likes_ about Juliette is that she isn't Rayna. 

But that's neither here nor there, and it's not at all what he wants to think about right before a show.

Before he even realizes he's doing it, he's singing the harmony for those two little girls. Rayna catches his eye and Deacon almost thinks he sees that old sparkle, but he can't be sure. There's something else there, too, and he decides it's just motherly pride.

****

He's already spiraling down before Maddie knocks on the door. It ought to be a happy day, going to the CMAs with Rayna on his arm, but all Deacon can think about is how he failed Juliette and Jolene. He did everything right, took all the right steps, but it wasn't enough, and that stings. More than stings. It rips the stitches out of a wound that never really healed. It's why Deacon never became a sponsor; he knew he didn't have the strength for it. One bad day and all his progress would go right out the window.

“I think you're my father,” she says.

In thirteen years, Deacon's never once wondered if he might be. Never even considered it. Sure, he's wondered what it would have been like if he'd gotten cleaned up sooner and ended up with Rayna in place of Teddy. Wondered what their kids would have been like, if they would have looked like him or like her. But he never asked himself if there was even the tiniest chance that Maddie might be his.

He looks down at her on the doorstep, tears pooling at the bottom of her glasses, and he knows she is.

****

It isn't until a week after her sixteenth birthday that Deacon talks Maddie into coming to the Bluebird with him. They sit at a table off to the side for a while, both of them sipping Cokes while other people, some they know and some newcomers, sing their songs. Deacon sings one he was too chickenshit to play for Maddie on her birthday. He wrote it for her, though. The melody got stuck in his head when he was in the hospital, caught between life and death, not sure if he would make it to the end of the song and see his daughter again. When he came back around, she was there by his bedside. It took him until two days before her sixteenth birthday, three damn years later, to get the words just right.

He doesn't tell her the song is for her, but he's pretty sure she knows. He still isn't too good at putting his feelings into words, even after three years practice as a dad and all twelve steps all over again. But Maddie knows; she always does, whether he says the words or not.

After his song, it doesn't take much more prodding to get her to unpack her guitar and sit down on the stage. He gives her a little smile before he takes to the mic and introduces her, his _daughter_ , to the world—at least, the tiny little slice of the world contained within that one bar. That's enough for now. The rest of them will know her name soon enough, one way or another.

The song she plays is a new one, one Deacon's only heard snippets of before, but he picks up the harmony easily enough and strums along. She doesn't need his voice, though. Her own is strong enough. Maddie sounds like Rayna, June Carter and—for the first time—Deacon hears himself in there, too. He wonders how he could have missed it. How he could have never even wondered if there wasn't a second source for her talent. 

No one's going to miss it now, though, Deacon thinks proudly as the crowd breaks out into applause during the last seconds of the song. They're going to hear that voice on the stage and on their radios someday, and they're going to know. Maddie's voice will ring out, loud and true, and it'll be the best thing Deacon and Rayna ever created together.


End file.
